Be Careful What You Wish For
by Violet to Blue
Summary: A starry summer night gives Levon and Joe the opportunity to relax. But then it reveals a dark secret from Joe's childhood.
1. Chapter 1

**Houston Knights** is an American crime drama set in Houston, Texas. The show ran on CBS from 1987 to 1988 and had 31 episodes. The core of the show was the partnership between two very different cops from two different cultures. Chicago cop Joey LaFiamma is transferred to the Houston Police Department after he kills a mobster from a powerful Mafia family and a contract is put out on him. In Houston he is partnered with Levon Lundy, the grandson of a Texas Ranger. Although as different as night and day, and after a rocky beginning the two cops form a successful partnership and become friends. During the series, it is revealed that both LaFiamma and Lundy have their own personal demons. LaFiamma comes from a Mob family himself and his Chicago police partner was killed when he went ahead while LaFiamma waited for backup to arrive. Lundy´s wife was killed by a car bomb that was intended for him.

Standard Disclaimer: Houston Knights belongs to Jay Bernstein and Michael Butler and Columbia Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fan fiction, written out of love for the shows. I am making no money off this. I have no money so please don't sue me. Any original characters who may appear in these stories are the property of the author.

Houston Knights Fanfiction

 **Be Careful What You Wish For**

By Violet to Blue

Summery: A starry summer night gives Levon and Joe the opportunity to relax. But it also reveals a dark secret from Joe's childhood.

Chapter 1

"Come on, let´s call it a day." Levon Lundy threw the file he had just completed into the out box on his desk. His gaze travelled over to his partner on the job, Joe LaFiamma. Joe did not seem to hear him, he had closed his eyes. The file in front of him had fallen shut and the pen had slipped from his grip.

"Joe?"

"Mmh?"

"You still with me?"

"Mmh?"

Levon yawned. He could understand that Joe was tired. The week had been long and taxing, late hours, seemingly endless grillings, useless stakeouts. They had tried to complete the files on their last case before leaving for the weekend. Levon had pulled through. But Joe had obviously failed even though he usually was better with all the paperwork than Levon.

"Joe, you can finish this on Monday, I am sure Joanne won´t mind." Levon couldn´t help but smile at his sleeping partner. Their superior, Lieutenant Joanne Beaumont, would probably have laughed out loud at the picture at hand, had she still been around.

"Mmh?"

Levon got to his feet, put on his jacket and donned his hat. He rounded the desk and stepped up behind Joe. He bent down and put his hand on the other man´s shoulder as he softly spoke into Joe´s ear.

"You wonna stay here over the weekend or should I take you home?"

Joe started up in his chair. "Geeze, Lundy, can´t you say something before you scare me to death?" He felt his heart race and tried to cover his embarrassment by sounding annoyed. He had no idea how long he had nodded off for.

"You got anything planned for tonight?"

Joe stretched and yawned. He pushed the file away and picked up his wayward pen, then shook his head.

"You wonna join me for dinner at the ranch?"

Joe looked up in surprise. "What, you need to clear out your fridge?"

"No, I bought steaks and I was planning to set up the barbeque. I even got salad to go with it and a bottle of wine." Normally Levon did not care much for vegetables and beer was his usual drink of choice.

"Wow, what´s the occasion?" Joe had gotten up and picked up his teal colored jacket. He did not put it on though. The evening was still warm and pleasant.

"Well, I had a cancellation and instead of throwing it all into the bin I thought I might as well feed it to you," Levon smirked.

"Lundy, no way…" Joe harrumphed indignantly but then looked more closely at his smiling partner. "Stop making fun of me, will yah?"

Levon almost burst out laughing. "Joe, I wonna treat you to something good. What´s wrong with that?" He held the door of the bullpen open and they stepped out into the corridor. In passing Joe reached out and switched off the lights in the squad room. They had been the last officers of the Major Crimes Unit who had been on duty this Friday night.

"What have I done to deserve that?" Joe inquired skeptically.

Levon felt awkward. Joe had backed him up twice this week in difficult and dangerous situations. He knew that he could blindly rely on his partner. That was reason enough to treat his partner, his friend to a good meal and an evening of pleasant company. But that was not what he wanted to admit openly. He knew Joe would feel embarrassed about it and would probably reject the invitation. So he just did not answer but pulled Joe along to the parking garage in the basement of the police station. And Joe did not repeat the question but simply trailed along.

Having involuntarily left his large Italian family behind in Chicago, Joe often felt lonely on the days he spent off work. He did not like to admit it but rather tried to hide it as best he could. But Levon knew nonetheless. He did what he could to engage Joe in his weekend activities and convey the feeling he belonged. This night was no exception and Joe reluctantly, but with a sense of unvoiced gratitude, accepted the offer. Other than Levon, who was at times a loner and cherished the solitude, Joe thrived on human company. Their differences could easily be ascribed to the contrary upbringing and different cultural background. Due to that and the different tastes and lifestyles the partners sometimes found it hard to spend common time. But that also added to the diversity of their free time, each of them learning and getting to know what the other preferred and liked to do. It seemed that now at last they had found their individual ways to get along without aggravating each other.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

So this warm Friday night found the partners together at Levon´s ranch. While Levon tended his horse Joe prepared the salad and marinated the steaks. The barbeque was of course Levon´s domain. And Joe gladly left it at that. After dinner they played a few games of chess. Both good players who had acquired the art of strategy early in their respective childhood they did not give each other a run for their money. Most of the time they kept an even score.

Though he had nodded off at the office Joe had not given into his fatigue again after that. But when his concentration on the game slackened they moved location and sat down on the porch swing. First Joe closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the crickets.

"Have you seen the stars?" Levon nudged Joe in the ribs.

"Give me a break, Levon, I could have gone to sleep hours ago," Joe grunted indignantly.

"Joe, you mustn´t miss this. It´s not that often that you can see shooting stars in such a great number."

Levon pointed at the dark sky. There was no moon and so it was really pitch black. Another shooting star raced across the sky.

"Make a wish, Joe." Levon´s suggestion came across lightheartedly and in a cheerful tone of voice.

Joe looked at him with large eyes, the emotions playing across his face, starting out as surprise but then quickly turning to anguish. Levon was stunned. How could something as innocent and naive as making a wish at the sight of a falling star cause such obvious distress?

Then Joe looked away and Levon was sure that he wanted to hide his face from Levon´s gaze.

"Yah wonna talk about it?" Levon was worried about the strange reaction he had just witnessed.

"Nothing to talk about," came Joe´s typically flat retort.

Levon waited a moment before he broke the ensuing silence. "Wonna try again?" He laid his hand on Joe´s arm. As Joe turned to meet his eyes Levon could see a profound sadness on his partner´s face.

"Yeah, sorry." Joe nodded and looked into the sky but fell silent again. Levon did not push him, he knew Joe would tell him what was on his mind sooner or later. He patiently waited and after a few minutes Joe in fact resumed speaking.

"I´d rather stick to the other saying," he said in a very low voice.

"Which one?" Levon inquired.

"Be careful what you wish for."

"Why, you superstitious?" Levon tried to penetrate the dark in order to read his partner.

"No, bad experience."

"Before Caroline and I got together I spent a weekend on the mesa all by myself. It was a night very much like this. There were a few shooting stars and referring to the saying I made a wish when I caught sight of one. It came true when Caroline and I got together only a week later."

"You´re not supposed to tell…" There was a note to Joe´s voice that was giving Levon the creeps.

"Can´t do any harm now, can it? With her being dead for over three years now," he countered. They fell silent again, this time for so long that Levon almost thought that Joe had fallen asleep.

But then Joe started to speak, his baritone was very quiet and in the dark fragrant summer night it had an almost velvety quality.

"The summer before I turned eight my parents sent me to spend the vacation with some relatives in the country. They had a farm and as I had been sick a lot during the previous winter, my parents thought it a good idea to let me spend the summer in a healthier environment than Chicago." Joe shifted uneasily, his fingers nervously running along the wooden armrest of the swing. "I had two cousins there who were close to my age and we actually had a great time running wild on the farm."

Joe looked at the sky again as if searching for something and Levon tried to follow his gaze. But there was nothing but the myriad of stars.

"We spent many nights in the barn or under the open sky. Even when we were not supposed to be out and about we would climb out of the window and do what we liked. My aunt and uncle did not really care. Every once in a while they would give us a sermon and some chores but that was more for show than to seriously keep us in line. As long as we did not get into serious trouble we could pretty much do what we liked."

"Sounds like you had a great time there," Levon put in to remind Joe of his presence.

"Yeah, I had," Joe stated pensively before falling silent again.

There must be more to the story than just the tale of a pleasant childhood summer holiday, Levon mused. Something in Joe´s voice made him feel strangely uneasy. He wondered why Joe was telling him this, how was it connected to the strange reaction he had seen on Joe´s face when he had asked him to make a wish?

"Close to the end of the holiday there was a night just like this." Joe´s voice was very low now, hardly audible, yet full of emotions. "And when my cousin told me about the shooting stars and the wishes I made a whish when I saw one." Another long interval of silence ensued.

"I wished for a sibling. You know, all Italian families are large but I still was an only child. I wanted nothing more than to have a brother or sister."

"Yeah, just like me. But Mom never had another child." Levon´s voice bore a note of sadness now.

"When I got home my mom was pregnant and just before Christmas I got a baby sister. I was so proud." Though the news itself was positive Levon wondered at the despair he perceived in Joe´s voice.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"There was a girl in my class whom I liked a lot and wanted to impress. So I told her that I knew how to make wishes come true. She laughed at me and wanted me to prove it." Though Levon could not clearly see Joe´s face in the dark he could hear that the words almost stuck in his partner´s throat.

Levon had to strain to understand the next sentences. "That was about three months after Lucia was born. Of course I knew that you are not supposed to tell what you wished for because then it would not come true. But what harm could it do now that my wish had been granted? So I told her about it, about my sister who was my wish come true from a shooting star." The last words almost choked in the suppressed sob that Joe tried to hold back unsuccessfully.

Levon turned to him in concern. He put his hand on Joe´s arm and felt that Joe was shaking. Not knowing what to do he just exerted a light pressure on the other´s arm to convey his comforting presence.

After a while Joe drew a ragged breath and continued. "The very next day Uncle Mikey picked me up from school and took me to his house. He and Aunt Teresa said I was to stay with them for a while. Nobody told me what had happened but I knew nonetheless that something was dead wrong. I felt terribly homesick. I just wanted to go home and be with my family. But Uncle Mikey would take me to school every morning and pick me up afterwards, and my cousins would never let me out of their sight. I was never alone except in the bathroom. And they would not let me go back to my parent´s place."

Levon had kept his eyes on Joe all the time. But Joe had not looked at him. When he finally turned to face his partner directly Levon was struck by the large black eyes and the tears that were running down Joe´s face freely now.

"When I returned home three months later I learnt that my baby sister was dead."

The words uttered so matter-of-factly cut through Levon like an ice cold knife.

"They said an angel had come to take her and that she was in heaven now." In the dim light Levon could see that Joe swallowed hard. "But I knew I had killed her, I had given away her secret and with that I had killed her." Joe´s shoulders slumped forward and his hands came up to cover his eyes.

Levon was shocked. "You know that´s not true." He wanted to shake his partner to make him see reason.

"I know now," Joe whispered tonelessly. "But I didn´t know then. I was only eight years old. I never spoke to anyone about it, not even in confession. I felt like my own parents would kill me or…or…stop loving me for what I had done to my sister and to them. And they probably would have had any right to do so. I couldn´t even have blamed them."

Levon did not know what to say. He could hardly grasp the significance of what Joe had told him, how his young life had been so severely tainted by something so grave and which he believed was solely his fault. But Joe had not finished yet.

"From then on it was as if an evil curse was lying on my family. Of course my parents were much depressed. I stopped eating and sleeping with all that guilt on my conscience and I got sick, really sick. My parents must have feared losing me too. I don´t remember that much, only that I was in hospital for a while. Shortly after I got out my dad was shot and I went back to stay with Uncle Mikey and Aunt Teresa because my mom couldn´t cope." Joe wiped his hand across his wet eyes. "A year later she died. I think she simply had lost her will to live."

Levon drew his partner into his tight embrace. Joe gave in and cried. He had never cried about this before, had never dared to. He had encapsulated the pain, despair and guilt within the core of his soul, his very being. He had never spoken to anyone about this before either. Growing up he had at some point in time realized that he had been subjected to a child´s misjudgment, that it had not been his fault. But the feelings embedded so deeply had stayed so fresh and ironically well conserved in his soul that they could not be changed by reasoning.

Now he had brought it all out just because of a silly shooting star on a beautiful night, a night which had turned to sheer horror for him. He had relived his childhood trauma and thus for the first time had sought healing.

And for the first time Levon saw Joe in a totally new light. All of a sudden he understood the moodiness that so often surrounded Joe for what it was.

"I never really felt at home anywhere after my baby sister died. Not even at Uncle Mikey´s, even though he and Aunt Teresa did everything to help me along."

Levon felt the need to console his partner by relaying his own experiences. "After my mom´s death my daddy took off and Mother Minnie and my granddaddy took me in. I know what it means to a child to lose its home."

Joe withdrew from his embrace and wiped his face. "But you didn´t blame yourself for your mom´s death, did yah?"

"I guess every child does that to a certain extent. The concept of death is difficult to understand for a child and its sole experience with being deserted might have been that of a punishment as a consequence of misconduct. So, yes, I think every child looks for reasons for being left behind within itself."

Joe looked stunned. He never had seen it that way. He realized that Levon had a point there and slowly nodded.

"And even more so when the parent just leaves and does not die?"

"Yeah," Levon conceded, not able to keep the sadness and disappointment out of his own voice. Those sentiments were closely connected with his father´s departure from his life.

Joe nodded again. He pulled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and blew his nose. "Sorry for losing it, Levon." He looked at his hands, not able to meet his partner´s eyes.

"Don´t be a fool Joe. I´m glad you told me. Should have spoken about it a long time ago, though."

They both looked up to the starry sky. It had a magic to it that Joe had only experienced during that holiday a long time ago. Levon, though, could remember countless summer nights of that quality.

"You know, I always wondered if my baby sister had gone back to be a star and if I would be able to recognize her star if only I could see the stars as I saw them on that night." Joe´s voice was thick with emotions again, emotions of despair that were just as overwhelming as they had been more than twenty years ago. "But I never saw a sky like that again, not in all my life. In the city you just can´t see the stars like this." Even though he tried hard to hold it together he started sobbing again. "Never until tonight."

Levon leaned over and put his arm firmly around Joe´s shoulder. He just held on. Now he knew that his partner´s moodiness wasn´t just an inconvenient quirk but a serious affliction rooted deeply within the wounded soul of the child Joe had been. And he wondered if the man Joe had become would ever truly get over this. What could he do to help his partner?

Even though Levon could not answer that question he resolved there and then to do whatever was in his power to help.

 **The End**

Author´s note:

In the Houston Knights episode "Burnout" Joe hands in his resignation from the police force and plans to leave Houston. A colleague states that now Joe finally seems to get what he always wished for. Joe answers: "Be careful what you wish for."

A few years ago I too made a wish when I saw a falling star. I never told anyone what I wished for. Though my wish came true, in retrospect I often wonder at the fact that the object of my desire did not turn out to be the priceless gift I hoped it would be. Of course I know that not making that wish would not have changed the course of events or the reality that was yet to come. Still the feelings about such things are strong and emotional even in the most rational human being. Today I have to admit that I would not repeat making a wish. Though we know we cannot change reality or the future with our thoughts and wishes we feel as if we actively make a difference. If the results still don´t turn out the way we expect we think we are the only ones to blame and feel uneasy about it. So in the end it might be more desirable to accept the inevitable, which we also call fate, after all.

And in addition the wishes that never come true seem to feed the soul far more than those that become reality – and tend to be disillusioned.

As Joey said: "Be careful what you wish for" - because your wishes might come true after all.


End file.
